Welcome to Awakening to Your Story the place to learn, get inspired and be supported with heart-centered solutions for your everyday life. I am Alicia Hartzell and today we are going to be talking about how to navigate a challenging situation.

There are 5 tried and true steps that not only help you get through a challenging situation but can actually make the situation feel like a win. Now that applies to the vast menu of challenging situations you may find yourself navigating. You can easily apply it to the smaller situations like finishing up a project or having that uncomfortable conversation with someone. Maybe you are dealing with bigger situations like: changing the overall direction of your life or career, a divorce or break up, health or financial struggles, or putting your life on pause to help a family member. These five steps will help you tackle these or anything in between. I have a personal example I will share with you, but first let’s look at the 5 steps.

FIVE STEPS FOR NAVIGATING A CHALLENGING SITUATION

1. Set An Intention
2. Create Tangible Actions
3. Check In With Yourself
4. Call Out Your Wins
5. Activate Physical, Mental and Emotional Self-care

Set An Intention:

Creating a clear intention sets the over all stage and tone for how you participate in the situation. Activating this kind of conscious awareness moves you from a reactive participant to an interaction participant. It gifts you more autonomy and a sense of personal power even within the challenge.

When creating an intention it’s important to not only call out what you want, but also how you want to feel. This intention then acts as a filter that can help you stay on track as you navigate the highs and lows of what ever comes your way. Intentions keep you tapped into your personal alignment.

Create Tangible Actions:

What are the next logical steps forward that you can take? Write them out and then check them off as you go. The clearer you are, the better. So don’t push too far out in front of the situation, instead just stay active in a handful of steps or tasks at a time. This will keep you focused and on track.

As a bonus each time you check one off your list you will get a little rush of dopamine. This chemical in your brain will make you feel good and help keep you motivated to keep going.

Check In With Yourself:

Check-ins are key. Our brains move a mile a minute especially when we are navigating the rocky waters of life. So creating space to check in with yourself helps you make sure you are staying conscious, on task, and moving according to your intention. It also allows you space to make adjustments wherever they might be needed.

Make sure you are checking in on your tangible actions as well as your mental and emotional wellbeing. Check in to see how you’re feeling. Ask yourself what you need to stay in in that place of inner alignment and path moving forward.

Call Out Your Wins:

This step may seem like a non-necessity but it does a lot of heavy emotional lifting. Not only does it help you feel better while you are navigating the challenge it also helps your brain build a positive bias in the midst of the situation. If you have been here with me for a while you know how valuable using the Emotional Tool: Positive Bias can be for you. If you are new to emotional tools I want to direct you to the Awakening To Your Story Emotional Tool Library.

When you call out your wins write them out just like you wrote out your list. Doing this amplifies their power in your brain. Scan, Scan, Scan the situation and call out any and everything that even resembles the feeling of a win. Even if it’s small, once you start you eventually build momentum to that feeling and sensation of positivity and possibility.

Activate Physical, Mental and Emotional Self-care:

Pick a category or jump into all three because you can never have too much self-care. These acts of love and kindness will be sustaining to you while navigating your way through the situation.

Self-care means you are creating deliberate acts of kindness for yourself. Places where you gift yourself compassion, grace, care and love. Physical, mental or emotional, it creates space where you can come back to yourself, take a breath, and be as you are. In this space there is no resistance or struggle, which allows these acts to feel nourishing to you on many levels.

If you are new to self-care or the deeper practice of self-care you will want to check out Season 6 Episode 11 How Practice Self-Care and Self-Love. It will give you more understanding and ideas that you can add into your day.

I recently navigated my way through what had to be one of the most physically and emotionally taxing situations of my adult life. What could have been a situation that tore my marriage to shreds and left both of us shadows of ourselves ended up being fortifying to our marriage. We both walked away feeling accomplished, connected and really proud. I used these 5 Steps for myself and together with my husband and we walked away from the situation winning.

Rather then writing it out here I am going to share the story on the video so head over there to watch. I will mark the video so if you want to skip ahead to the story you can.

Ok, I am here if you have questions or need help along the way. Leave your comments, like and share this video and post, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and until next time know that I am holding a place of love for you where your ability to navigate your way to the winning side of any situation is undeniable.

 

The Starter Kit, Hand Book and Emotional Tool Library are great FREE resources that can help you along the way!

The Emotional Tool Library allows you to pick and choose which tool to focus on according to what is going on in your life. Each video and blog walks you through an emotional tool and how to create a practical application to your situation.

If you enjoy a more hands-on approach the Awaking to Your Story Starter Kit – 3 Tools For Returning To Your Power is filled with exercise, audios, and videos that help step back into your power and map out your emotional heart.

 

 

You can also grab a copy of the Awaking to Your Story –Navigating the River of Life Handbook. You can never go wrong knowing where you are on the river of life and having to tools to help you through any turbulent situation. You can use the exercises inside to help you stay focused on your re-patterning process.